Boris Johnson says Super Rich are an ‘Oppressed Minority’ worthy of our ‘Humble Thanks’ – Time for a Reality Check

Boris Johnson, Mayor of London, today used his platform of a column in the Daily Telegraph newspaper to argue that the super-rich are a ‘put upon minority’ like homeless people or the travelling community. He argues that they should be protected from ‘bullying’ by the public, who should instead be offering their ‘humble and hearty thanks’ for their ‘prodigious’ contributions to our public finances.

The reality is, these super rich individuals are paying an ever smaller share, while receiving substantial tax payer funded subsidies, and the protection of the publicly funded police from an increasingly outraged public.

The Cost of the Human Welfare State

The UK Government spend a total of £694.89bn a year, to do everything. The amount the government spend on benefits is £159bn, with £72bn (45%) of that going on pensions. So, we have £85bn (12% of spending) a year actually going on working age benefits. The UK’s current unemployment rate stands at 7.8%. It makes sense that we spend this proportionate amount of shielding citizens from poverty induced by involuntary unemployment, and support sick and disabled people who cannot work or who bear additional financial costs to work.

The richest 1% pay 30% of all income tax and national insurance (three times more than they paid back in the lefty paradise of the 1970's), meanwhile, the top 15% pay close to 70% of all income tax and you think they should pay more?

Do me a favour and Google 'Laffer Curve' and when you understand it, have a think what will happen to government services and your tax bill when the rich all piss off to somewhere sunny where they're not resented for being successful.

they pay more income tax than in the 70s because they own so much more now than then.The gap between the top and the rest of us is huge now compared to thirty odd years ago. The top 15 per cent were simply not as wealthy then as the top 15 per cent are now. Wealth inquality has worsened since the seventies (when equality peaked which is why that decade is used for comparison by the rich!)

> The richest 1% pay 30% of all income tax and national insurance (three times more than they paid back in the lefty paradise of the 1970's), meanwhile, the top 15% pay close to 70% of all income tax and you think they should pay more?

First of all, please provide the sources for your figures.

Secondly, these figures actually make the counter-argument to the point you want to make. The majority of the tax revenue comes from a small percentage because it is a such a small percentage which has taxable income.

In other words, we live in such an unequal, quasi-feudal society, that the majority of the people - the peasants - are so poor in terms of income and wealth, that they contribute a small absolute amount in total tax revenue.

You're so ideological that you can't see that if wealth were distributed more evenly - and by that I don't just mean RE-distributed, but if people were paid a fare wage and there was a large and thriving middle-class - then the poorer and middle would (could) contribute more to total tax revenue.

> Do me a favour and Google 'Laffer Curve' and when you understand it, have a think what will happen to government services and your tax bill when the rich all piss off to somewhere sunny where they're not resented for being successful.

Do me a favour and learn more about the 'Laffer Curve'. It is a theoretical model which is oversimplified. It is not a tool which can be used to calculate the perfect point at which tax revenue is maximized.

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And btw, in the 1970s 'lefty paradise' of high-taxation, income inequality was very low and spending power was very high. Wages in real terms have stagnated or declined since then for the vast majority of the public.

The tax burden, additionally, has shifted away from corporate tax to income tax. So that Average Joe is paying proportionately more towards total national tax revenue than he did in the previous decades. So the tax burden has actually shifted towards individuals, and away from corporations.

Ttosca most of my figures come from Boris' article itself, the remainder come from a very similar article from the Mail. I would provide links but I'm using my tumbletap which makes links tricky.

I don't agree with your point that we should make the poor richer so that we can then gouge them for more tax! Ideologically, this is no different from people on minimum wage having to pay Income Tax and Nat Ins and, without rehashing the argument, you know where I stand on that.

With regard to the Laffer curve, no one sensible has ever suggested using it to set tax rates, however, the principle stands that there is a point beyond which further increases of taxation are counterproductive. I happen to believe that for large swathes of the population, and particularly amongst the rich, we are either at or beyond that point already.

Finally, as I've mentioned elsewhere on this site, it really makes no difference overall whether individuals pay tax or corporations do, however, it is far harder for an individual to avoid paying their full amount than it is for a corp.

Finally, finally, a genuine question, are your figures of wealth inequality collated before the various methods put in place to counter that wealth inequality are included or after?

> I don't agree with your point that we should make the poor richer so that we can then gouge them for more tax! Ideologically, this is no different from people on minimum wage having to pay Income Tax and Nat Ins and, without rehashing the argument, you know where I stand on that.

Err, no. The poor shouldn't be paying any tax whatsoever. What I said was that if the rest of the 99% were actually paid more money, and wealth and income were more equal, then the middle would pay more tax in absolute terms towards total tax revenue.

That is, even with tax rates kept as they are, earning more money means they would contribute more, even while managing to keep more because of their higher income.

> With regard to the Laffer curve, no one sensible has ever suggested using it to set tax rates, however, the principle stands that there is a point beyond which further increases of taxation are counterproductive. I happen to believe that for large swathes of the population, and particularly amongst the rich, we are either at or beyond that point already.

Yes you believe that, like Ian Duncan Smith believes a lot of things for which there is no evidence, or counter evidence. Both corporate taxation and personal income tax are at their lowest rates for several decades. Corporate tax rates in the UK are amongst the lowest in OECD at around 20%. This is after several decades of neo-liberalism which has caused massive wealth inequality.

> Finally, as I've mentioned elsewhere on this site, it really makes no difference overall whether individuals pay tax or corporations do, however, it is far harder for an individual to avoid paying their full amount than it is for a corp.

I'm not sure what you mean by 'it makes no difference'. Revenue is revenue, but to say there is no difference where tax comes from is 'economistic' in the extreme. It is very important where tax revenue comes from, because there are other issues at stake. It's quite right that profits at taxed more than incomes of the poor.

> Finally, finally, a genuine question, are your figures of wealth inequality collated before the various methods put in place to counter that wealth inequality are included or after?

Which methods? Wealth and income inequality are almost always calculated after taxation:

I wouldn't quite choose the same words as Boris but there is a perennial bullying that goes on from the lefties and dafties who like to ignore facts, figures and reality to serve their socialist theories.

The top 10% of society pay well over half of all our income tax. Not to mention they're most likely to pay the most VAT and other taxes too.

Yet it's never enough for the lefties. They always want more.

The bottom line though is that you can only create wealth by allowing people to become rich and remain rich if they are lucky enough to do so. You simply cannot create wealth by taxing the rich to the point where they have nothing left. Because what/whom do you tax then?